If you were to go home and sit down to write the last chapter of your life, what would you write? Our lives are full of experiences, some good and some difficult. This morning, we gather as Christians, some having experienced divorce, and most all of us have parents, children, brothers, sisters, or friends who have become divorced. If we were to write a last chapter for our lives, would we write that we or they were divorced?
Why? I think it is because we believe in a God who takes broken lives and, through His mercy and forgiveness, He gives people new lives and new beginnings. In Christ all things are made new and are possible! In Christ we offer our lives to Him, and He can choose to use us to love others, lead others and share our faith stories with others, regardless of our past.
I will not try to assess the history of how Christians and churches have dealt with this passage on divorce. We can take a very hard line becoming judges without grace; we can take a hard line on divorce and then recognize failed relationships and give it another name where there is grace and new beginnings; or we can call divorce a failure of relationships, a failure to fully meet God’s ideal, but still offer complete forgiveness and the possibility of a new life and new relationships. The latter is how I think God relates to us. Total honesty. Total healing. Total forgiveness.
How then do we deal with this very harsh sounding passage from the Gospel of Mark? Is condemnation the only interpretation, or do we dismiss it completely?
Will Willimon comments, "When we think of Jesus, we are conditioned to think of him as loving, by which we mean Jesus is open, warm, and accepting, particularly toward us. In his book The American Religion, Harold Bloom claims that we Americans have one predominant faith and that is that God really, really likes us, that God is thrilled to be with us on any occasion, and that God couldn’t be happier with our moral progress. We’ve come a long way from Jonathan Edward’s sermon, "Sinner In the Hands of an Angry God." We are "basically good people in the embrace of a completely permissive God."(1)
This attitude is obviously a very permissive attitude that says what we do doesn’t matter. I don’t think that is right. On the other extreme is the view that says you break one law or certain laws and you are forever judged and limited in your worth and value to God. I don’t think either of these views represent the way that Jesus dealt with people, forgiveness and what life could become for them.
In our text in this tenth chapter of Mark Jesus voiced his profound concern for stable family life and for children. In Roman society, marriage had one purpose, to provide a legal heir who would inherit a man’s property. In Jewish society, men could divorce their wives for any reason, but wives had no such right without their husband’s consent. It is said that if a woman burned the toast or some other equally nit-picking complaint, that a man could divorce his wife. In vv.10-12, Jesus put women on an equal footing.
How is it that Jesus who seemed to frequently trouble the Pharisees by breaking many laws that they followed now takes the hard line when asked about divorce? Jesus broke their Sabbath laws by healing people or picking grain on the Sabbath. He was the friend of sinners and went to their homes.
In ancient societies marriage meant a guarantee of support for the most vulnerable members of the society, the women and children. Without the protection of the laws against divorce, women and children were totally at the mercy of their husbands and fathers. In criticizing those who advocated easy divorce (and there were many in Israel who did so in his day), Jesus puts himself on the side of the weak and the vulnerable.
Jesus justifies his tough position against divorce and remarriage by an appeal to the creation in Genesis 1. God intends that married people stay together. God is on the side of unity, community, and togetherness. Our world would be a heartless, unstable, and chaotic place without the order and stability of people who show enduring commitment to one another "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, until death do us part." With the rate of marital separation in our society, with poorly enforced child support laws, our world has become unglued for many, and it’s the children who suffer. Jesus reminds us, "From the beginning it was not this way."
Notice that the very next words of Jesus are about the love and care of children. What he says against divorce and what he says for children in today’s Gospel are related. It would be a sad perversion for the church today to take what Jesus said against marital breakup and use it to beat up on those persons who, for various reasons, have decided to end their marriage and separate, as if divorce were the one unforgivable sin. Marital separation hurts people, and hurting, vulnerable people are those who are especially loved by Jesus. I once heard a preacher say in a Mother’s Day sermon that, if a woman in an abusive relationship loved her husband enough, then he wouldn’t continue to abuse her or the children. I was stunned and angry. This text and this sermon should not be used to put guilt on a person who needs to end an abusive relationship that destroys your health, your self-worth and puts you and your children at risk.
Today’s Gospel defends those who are victimized in marriage and divorce and defends little children. It is Jesus’ response to a question that was put to him by his critics who were hoping to trip Jesus up. And what Jesus does is not to once-and-for-all condemn all divorced persons, but rather to come down clearly on the side of the weak, the vulnerable, and the defenseless. We live in a broken world where people make and break promises, where people find it difficult to keep their commitments, and where people have promises broken by other people. Jesus is clearly on the side of those who are hurt by such human chaos.(2)
He does this by clearly affirming God’s ideal. Remember that the setting was a theological contest. It was a discussion about what was lawful. It was not a response to a specific situation of pastoral care for real people.(3) Jesus was responding to a theological trap set by the Pharisees, not to the anguished pain of someone actually going through divorce.
When the situation did involve a real pastoral care situation, Jesus’ response was different than with the Pharisees. One time, Jesus spoke to a woman who had been divorced. We are told that she had five previous husbands and the man she was living with then was not her husband. How did Jesus respond to her and her situation? There were no words of shame or condemnation. Rather, He offered her eternal life, living water from which she would never thirst, and she ran off to tell everyone in the town about the man who was the Savior of the world.
Jesus is not saying it is a good idea to have five failed marriages. But when faced with a real, live person who happened to have failed, He loved her and shared living water with her. He gave her such hope for new life that she couldn’t wait to share the good news with her whole village. From Jesus’ actions in this case, it is obvious that failure in marriage is not an unpardonable sin. It is tragic; it is sad; it is heart breaking. We know its pain, but it is not the unpardonable sin.
On another occasion the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery. It seems one-sided that no one seems to care at all about the man involved in the sexual act with this woman. There is no condemnation for him from anybody. But the woman is hauled before Jesus and thrown on the ground while the Pharisees stood around and pointed an accusing finger at her.
Jesus is clearly against adultery, but in this setting of pastoral care, he says, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Go and sin no more." He doesn’t lower the bar, but he cares deeply for this one who failed. He gives her a second chance in life and sends her on her way.(4)
When the situation is theological about what are God’s purposes and ideals, Jesus tells us clearly, especially taking a position that helps to protect those who were weakest in society. When the situation is personal, involving real people, when people fail, we need to do like Jesus did. We need to love them, care for them, minister to them, forgive them and accept them. We need to join Jesus in helping people put their lives back together again.
For me, the last chapter is not divorce and it’s failure and pain, but it is letting God make all things new. For all of us God’s purpose is reconciliation. Who do you know that needs God’s love, forgiveness and reconciliation? How will you write the last chapter of your life? Will it be missed opportunities, wallowing in mistakes, blaming others or yourself?
Hear Jesus words to receive the kingdom of God as a little child. We must humble ourselves, trust God, and celebrate a life of giving and caring for others. Each day let us give as much of ourselves as we know to as much of God as we know. That’s reconciliation! That’s happiness! That’s discipleship! That’s the chapter I want to write! Amen.
Century Christian Church, October 8, 2006 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
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1. William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 34, No. 4, Oct-Dec, 2006, p. 10.
2. Willimon, p. 11.
3. From "Making Marriage Last," a sermon by Mickey Anders, October 1, 2000.
4. Ibid.
